February 15, 2023

Sidus Space Announces Multi-Million-Dollar Agreement with Netherlands for Laser Communication Satellite (Source: Sidus Space)
Sidus Space has been awarded a $2.5 million agreement with The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) to deploy and test TNO's laser communications technology aboard a Sidus' LizzieSat satellite. TNO will design and deliver HemiCAT, a high-efficiency miniature communications laser terminal, which Sidus will integrate into its hybrid 3D printed satellite, LizzieSat. Sidus will manage all aspects of integration, deployment, and operations, including procuring a launch and operating HemiCAT in orbit. The in-orbit demonstration mission for laser satellite communication is part of a study of Dutch defense technology. (2/15)

Maxar Moves to Close Deal with Advent After Receiving No Competing Offers (Source: Space News)
The $6.4 billion acquisition of Maxar Technologies by the private equity firm Advent International remains on track to close in mid-2023 following completion of a 60-day “go shop” period when other offers could have been considered. (2/15)

Europe to Investigate Viasat's Proposed Inmarsat Acquisition (Source: Space News)
The European Commission will conduct a full-scale investigation of Viasat's proposed acquisition of Inmarsat, which may further delay the completion of the deal. Margrethe Vestager, the European Commission executive vice president in charge of competition policy, said the investigation will examine if the deal could lead to higher prices and reduced quality of in-fight connectivity services that the two companies currently offer in competition with each other.

The commission expects to conclude the investigation by late June. Europe's concerns echo those raised by the U.K.'s competition watchdog, which launched a separate investigation in October with a March 30 deadline. An industry analyst says it is increasingly unlikely that the deal will close by May 8, as the companies previously projected. (2/15)

Space Surveillance Sensors Could Track Balloons (Source: Space News)
Space surveillance sensors could be used to track high-altitude balloons, a Pentagon official said Tuesday. John Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said that one option that an interagency group established by the White House to study Chinese aerial platforms will consider would be to "tune" sensors designed to track missiles as part of the Space Surveillance Network. He said one challenge will be "figuring out the right balance of resources" between tracking high-altitude balloons and missiles using that sensor network. (2/15)

Virgin Orbit Provides Launch Failure Details (Source: Space News)
Virgin Orbit released more details Tuesday about the failure of its LauncherOne rocket last month. The company said a fuel filter in the rocket's second-stage engine dislodged, and a fuel pump downstream of the filter subsequently suffered a loss of efficiency that reduced the amount of fuel reaching the engine. That caused the engine to operate at a higher temperature it was rated for, and components in the vicinity of it later malfunctioned, leading to a premature shutdown of the engine.

The company said the failure investigation is ongoing and did not set a date for a return to flight. The statement came a week after Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart revealed at a conference that the failure appeared to be linked to a dislodged filter. (2/15)

NASA Outlines Potential Requirements for Commercial Space Stations (Source: Space News)
NASA is providing commercial space station developers with additional information about its plans for those facilities. In a pair of white papers this week, NASA outlined its anticipated requirements in terms of crew time, power, volume and other resources needed for its projected use of commercial stations. It also described its proposed concept of operations for working with commercial space station providers. NASA is currently supporting four companies working on space station concepts, but some in the industry warn backing that many companies may only delay the development of commercial stations. (2/15)

Cobham to Supply Inmarsat Terminals to Support Navy (Source: Space News)
Cobham Satcom will supply as many as 170 terminals to Inmarsat for the U.S. Navy Military Sealift Command. Cobham's terminals will be used on ships to provide them with satellite communications under a $578 million 10-year contract Inmarsat Government won last year. Cobham said these terminals operate across multiple orbits so they will be able to support Inmarsat's geostationary and highly elliptical orbit satellites, ensuring access over the Arctic region. (2/15)

SpaceX Drops Plan to Convert Oil Rigs Into Launch Platforms, For Now (Source: Space News)
SpaceX has scuttled plans to convert oil rigs into Starship launch platforms. The company acquired two oil rigs, renamed Phobos and Deimos, in 2020, and sent them to a port in Mississippi to be converted into launch platforms. There had been little noticeable work on those platforms in recent months, though, and port manifests show both are scheduled to depart in the next month.

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said last week that the company sold the rigs after concluding they were "not the right platform" for Starship. She said, though, that SpaceX remains interested in sea-based launch platforms in the long term in order to support the high launch rates it foresees for Starship. (2/15)

GPS Ground System Likely Delayed Further (Source: C4ISRnet)
A new ground system for GPS satellites that is already years behind schedule may be further delayed. The Space Force's Space Systems Command said it is reevaluating the schedule for the delivery of the OCX ground control system for GPS satellites, previously set for April. Raytheon, the prime contractor for OCX, said there were "technical issues" with OCX in recent testing but did not elaborate. OCX has suffered years of delays, and it was not clear how long this latest delay would be or any additional costs. (2/15)

Intuitive Machines Shares Fall in First Day of Trading (Source: Yahoo!)
Intuitive Machines fell slightly in its first day of trading as a public company. Shares in the company, trading as LUNR on Nasdaq, fell nearly 4.7% Tuesday, closing at $10.03 a share. The company closed its merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) on Monday, raising $55 million. (2/15)

'Voice of NASA' Hugh Harris Passes at 90 (Source: WMFE)
Hugh Harris, a longtime public affairs officer known as the "Voice of NASA", has died at 90. Harris spent 35 years at NASA in various public affairs roles, and was best known for providing commentary for early shuttle launches. He retired from the agency in 1998. (2/15)

Strange Things are Happening With the Solar System’s Rings (Source: Cosmos)
In the early 1980s, NASA’s Voyager mission first revealed transient features on the rings of the solar system’s second largest planet. These “spokes” or “smudges”, as they became known, have confounded scientists since. Because of Saturn’s tilt, it like Earth has four seasons. The planet’s equinox occurs when its rings are edge-on to the sun. The spokes disappear near summer or winter solstice. May 6, 2025 marks the beginning of Saturn’s autumnal equinox – and the spokes are believed to become increasingly prominent until then.

From the sublime to the ridiculous: the solar system’s newest ring system shouldn’t exist. Astronomers have discovered a new ring system around a dwarf planet, Quaoar. But the catch is that the ring system orbits the planet much further than is typical – seven times the dwarf planet’s radius (for comparison, Saturn’s rings lie within three of Saturn’s radii). Normally, material orbiting so far out should evolve into a moon, not a ring system. “It was unexpected to discover this new ring system in our Solar System, and it was doubly unexpected to find the rings so far out from Quaoar, challenging our previous notions of how such rings form,” says Professor Vik Dhillon. (2/14)

The Secret Lives of Neutron Stars (Source: WIRED)
When astronomers catch a glimpse of an unusual signal in the sky, perhaps the light from a star exploding, Heloise Stevance takes that signal and rewinds the clock on it by billions of years. She traces the past lives of dead and dying stars, a process she calls stellar genealogy. “There’s a lot of drama in the lives of stars,” she says.

On August 17, 2017, astrophysicists witnessed two dead stars’ remnant cores, known as neutron stars, colliding into each other in a distant galaxy. Known as a neutron star merger, they detected this event via ripples in spacetime—known as gravitational waves—and light produced by the resulting explosion. This marked the first and only time scientists had seen such an event using gravitational waves. From those signals, they deduced that the neutron stars were 1.1 to 1.6 times the mass of the Sun. They also figured out that such collisions create some of the heavier natural elements found in the universe, such as gold and platinum.

According to Stevance and her team’s analysis, the two neutron stars in the collision were, respectively, the remains of a star 13 to 24 times the mass of the Sun and another star 10 to 12 times the mass of the Sun. Both began shining between 5 and 12.5 billion years ago, and at that time, only 1 percent of the stars’ makeup consisted of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. The work on this neutron star merger builds on decades of astronomy research. Stevance’s colleagues began to formulate their model of stars 15 years ago to study celestial objects in extremely distant galaxies. (2/13)

NASA, Boeing Celebrate Next Generation of Rocket Production at Michoud (Source: Biz New Orleans)
Officials from NASA and Boeing hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new rocket production space at the NASA Michoud Assembly Facility. At the event, Boeing announced a $1 million grant for STEM NOLA, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing STEM education to under-served communities in New Orleans and nationwide. But the main focus of the day was the debut of a new area at Michoud dedicated to building the next generation of NASA’s Space Launch System, a “super-heavy lift capability” rocket built to carry people and cargo to deep space.

The site, which boasts 2.2 million square feet of covered manufacturing space under one roof, produced Saturn rockets in the early days of the country’s pace program and then external tanks for the Space Shuttle from the 1970s into the early 2000s. It was originally built during World War II to construct planes and, later, tanks for the country’s war efforts.

There are currently roughly 3,500 employees at Michoud working for NASA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and other tenants. NASA estimates that the site has a total annual economic impact of approximately $830 million. Michoud is back to the business of building rockets — and the excitement is palpable. (2/13)

Musk Says SpaceX Restricted Internet in Ukraine to Prevent Escalation ‘That May Lead to WW3’ (Source: Politico)
SpaceX's recent restriction on the Ukrainian military's use of its satellite internet service for drone control was to prevent the conflict from escalating into a world war, according to Elon Musk. Answering a request from a former NASA astronaut to restore full access to the internet for Ukrainian forces, SpaceX CEO Musk tweeted late Sunday: "Starlink is the communication backbone of Ukraine, especially at the front lines, where almost all other internet connectivity has been destroyed. But we will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3." (2/13)

NASA’s Webb Telescope Is Close To Detecting ‘Cosmic Dawn’ (Source: Forbes)
NASA’S James Webb Space Telescope is close to detecting the universe’s cosmic dawn when the universe was first bathed in starlight. Or so says astronomer Richard Ellis. Ellis has helped usher in a new era of galactic astronomy. All total, he has spent nearly 800 nights at some of the best ground-based optical observatories the world has to offer. And in the process, he’s seen the lookback times for the onset of galaxy formation continually pushed back to only a few hundred million years after the big bang.

In JWST's first six months, we’ve explored hitherto completely uncharted periods of cosmic history, Ellis said. Secondly, these early objects seem to be qualitatively different from the galaxies that we see, at later times, he says. These early galaxies are compact, and super-luminous and forming stars at least 10 times faster than our present Milky Way Galaxy, says Ellis. Probably the most important result so far is that we're finding these early galaxies that are brighter than expected and ferociously forming stars, he says.

“We're now witnessing galaxies only 250 years to 350 million years after the Big Bang,” said Ellis. “That is shocking.” As you go back to these early times, the light from those early galaxies has been stretched into the infrared region, where Hubble didn't have coverage, says Ellis. So, in just six months, from the first science results from Webb, it's clear that people are finding galaxies beyond the horizon that was set by Hubble, he says. (2/14)

Pentagon’s Unidentified-Object Office Is Underfunded, Senators Say (Source: Wall Street Journal)
The Pentagon office set up to detect and identify mysterious objects, such as the three shot down by the U.S. jet fighters over the past week, was mistakenly underfunded, said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the New York Democrat who pushed to create the office. The Pentagon last year established the classified All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, from legislative language Ms. Gillibrand and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) put in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2022. (2/14)